Swift Justice (13 page)

He didn’t seem to appreciate my humor. “I’m locking up now,” he said, smoothing his hair down. His chagrin was not so easily smoothed away. “Get out.”

I exited the apartment, patting my pocket to make sure I still had the ultrasound photo. Truman locked the door behind us, then clattered down the stairs a full flight in front of me. A young couple held hands at the bottom. The guy called out, “Hey, Tru, is that the empty apartment you said we could use?”

“In a minute, man.” Truman waved him away, nervously watching as I crossed to my car.

The buzz-cut youth was having none of it. “I’ve got the fifteen bucks, dude, but we’re in a hurry. Amy has to be back for a three o’clock lab.” He kissed the girl’s neck, and she giggled. He pulled her up the stairs. “Is it open?”

I raised my eyebrows at Truman as he fought to regain his sangfroid and tossed the keys into the youth’s outstretched hand. The slimeball was renting out Elizabeth’s apartment for his buddies to have sex. I hoped he’d waited until after the cops had gathered their evidence.

“Are you a business major?” I paused with a hand on the roof of the Subaru. Maybe the MBA program gave extra credit for this kind of entrepreneurship.

“Shit, no. Philosophy. My specialty’s ethics.” He smirked and flashed me a peace sign as I pulled away. Or maybe he meant it as a
V
for victory.

It was too late to make it out to Black Forest to catch up with Linnea Fenn where the bus let her off. Damn. Now I’d have to wait until Monday to talk to her. I’d make do with Montgomery. Walking into my blessedly Gigi-free office, I dialed his number. Detective Montgomery was not available, another cop told me. I left a message for him to call me. I needed to let him know about Truman’s shenanigans with the apartment, in case he or his buddies had contaminated the scene before the crime scene team got there, and I needed to share the e-mails with him, assuming his team hadn’t come up with them.

The e-mails . . . I logged on to my account to view the e-mails I’d forwarded. It looked like Elizabeth only had three correspondents: ANewcastle@earthlink, elfin92@comcast, and stejac1993@hotmail. The notes to Aurora Newcastle were innocuous, describing the pregnancy, Elizabeth’s worry about the impending birth, and her refusal to put Aurora in her father’s line of fire by accepting her hospitality or money. The notes to elfin92 talked about her pregnancy fears, her financial difficulties, her love for Harry Potter books, teachers and mutual friends, and her plan to escape her parents and Colorado Springs forever once she saw “the deal” through and collected. The text messaging symbols and school talk in these notes convinced me elfin92 was a teenaged friend, maybe Linnea Fenn. If Linnea was Elizabeth’s confidante, it seemed more than likely that she’d be able to give me a line on the baby’s father. Maybe I could find a way to hook up with her this weekend.

The e-mails to stejac1993 were the strangest and gave the least clue as to the recipient’s role in her life. They seemed to be reports on her pregnancy, with her weight recorded each week, her belly measurements, the results of a diabetes test, diet details. One of the e-mails had a scanned attachment of the ultrasound photo. Could these be to her mother, at some anonymous account her father didn’t know about? Hotmail and Yahoo were popular e-mail servers for people wanting to keep their real identities hidden or for people wanting accounts their significant others didn’t know about. Maybe Patricia Sprouse was not as out of touch with her daughter as she wanted to appear. I definitely needed to talk to her again when the Prophet wasn’t there to run interference. I also had
to consider the possibility the e-mails were to Olivia’s father, but they seemed strangely sterile for a girl writing to her boyfriend, even a boyfriend she might’ve broken up with. I doodled with a pen on my blotter. Maybe they were to the boyfriend’s mother? Now, that idea had potential. The relationship was over, but the soon-to-be-grandparents wanted to keep tabs on the well-being of their son’s baby. Hmmm.

With no way to arrive at an answer, I printed out the e-mails, stuffed them into my briefcase, and locked up the office. I felt half guilty at the realization that my workday was ending but Gigi’s had yet to begin. I’d forgotten to tell her that staying awake was the hardest part of a nighttime surveillance. Oh well, if she fell asleep, maybe she’d be more willing to admit what was painfully obvious: She just wasn’t cut out to be a PI.

Gigi slumped in the front seat of the Hummer, her eyes glued to the door of 327 East Primrose Lane. She was frankly surprised that anyone who lived in the run-down cottage could afford a private investigator, never mind the new Lincoln Navigator that gleamed in the driveway. They’d have been better off spending their money on exterior paint or a concrete contractor to shore up the front steps and stoop, she figured. For the hundredth time, she glanced at the photo of her target, although she already had the woman’s features memorized. She hadn’t seen her in the four hours she’d been parked down the block from the house.

A cold nose nudged her, and Gigi responded to the demand by patting the silky head of her Shih Tzu. “Good boy, Nolan,” she said softly. The dog laid his small muzzle on Gigi’s lap and heaved a sigh. “I know it’s boring, but we’ve got important work to do.”

Dressed in a set of forest green (the closest color she had to black) Juicy Couture sweats, Gigi had figured she’d blend in by taking Nolan for walks. However, she was afraid to get out
of the Hummer in this neighborhood. She checked the locks again and patted Nolan absently. Picking up the knitting she’d laid on the passenger seat, she worked on the sweater intended for Kendall’s birthday in a month, her eyes still on 327 as her fingers clicked the needles on autopilot. No movement from the house.

Not only was surveillance the most boring job in the world, it gave her far too much time to think. Her thoughts roamed from Les’s last communication—divorce paperwork delivered through his lawyer—to the fight that afternoon with Kendall, who wanted to go to a party at a senior’s house that night. When Gigi heard there would be no parental supervision at the party, she put her foot down.

“You’re only fourteen, honey,” she reminded the enraged girl, trying to stroke her silky blond hair.

Kendall jerked her head away. “I’m not a kid. You let Dexter go to parties.”

She didn’t
let
Dexter go, Gigi thought; he just went. Since his father had gotten him the BMW for his sixteenth birthday, she had virtually no control over his movements. She kept that reflection to herself. “There will be too many older kids there, and you know some of them will be drinking alcohol.”

“Oh, Mom, get real! It’s not like I’ve never had a beer,” Kendall replied, tossing her hair.

Feeling cowardly, Gigi let that revelation slide. “Besides, you’ve got the compulsories to get through for the competition Saturday morning. We’ll need to be at the rink by seven.” Reminding Kendall of her skating obligations usually brought the girl into line; she lived to skate. Gigi congratulated herself on the strategy.

“Skating is ruining my life,” Kendall flashed. “Practice, practice, practice . . . that’s all I do! Oh yeah, and compete and go to costume fittings and more practice.” She glowered.

“That’s how you get to the Olympics, honey,” Gigi reminded her gently. “You’ve wanted an Olympic gold since you were three.”

“Well, maybe I don’t want that anymore.” The teenager stormed out of the kitchen and into her bedroom, slamming the door.

Nolan’s wet tongue licking her cheeks where the tears were sliding down brought Gigi back to the stifling car and the job at hand. “You love Mummy, right?” she asked the dog.

He responded with a yip, and she laughed, drying her tears with the half-finished sweater. Looking up, she saw a car—she was hopeless with makes and models, but thought it was silver or maybe white—pull up to the curb in front of 327. “Look, Nolan, it must be Cheryl’s lover. How brazen! She doesn’t even have the decency to go to a motel.” She wondered if Les had ever made love to Heather-Anne in their marriage bed. The thought made her want to cry. She readied the camera which she’d been practicing with all afternoon and snapped a picture of the short man in a denim jacket who got out of the driver’s seat and strode to the door. The porch light was out, so she couldn’t see who answered the door when he knocked, but she took another photo anyway as the man disappeared inside. Charlie had told her the camera had an infrared something-or-other and took clear photos in low light.

She set the camera carefully on the passenger seat and took up her notebook to record the activity. Even as she was jotting down the time of the lover’s arrival, he stepped back
onto the porch, paced down the cracked sidewalk, and roared away from the curb. “That was fast, even by Les’s standards,” she told Nolan, penciling in the man’s departure. “I guess we’re not going to get any proof of infidelity tonight, Nolan. Maybe we should—”

Another car pulled up, this one a blue SUV of some kind. Her eyes wide, Gigi watched a muscular black man hop out and ring the doorbell. He was inside a little longer than the first man, but he, too, left after only a short visit. The scene repeated itself three times in the course of the next hour, with Gigi snapping photos of all the arrivals but never getting a clear look at the woman welcoming them into her home. “Do you think she’s a prostitute?” she asked Nolan after the fifth man departed.

“Rrr-row,” Nolan growled, putting his small paws on the door to peer out the window. He whined.

“Oh, no, do you have to do your business?”

“Rowf!” the dog affirmed, dancing on the passenger seat, his black-and-white fur bouncing, the tail curled over his back wagging madly.

Gigi glanced doubtfully at the dark street. The blue glow of a television leaked from a window a block away, but that was the only sign of life. Hooking Nolan’s leash to his collar, she scooped him under her arm and cautiously opened the door. The only sounds were the swishing of leaves in a light breeze and the rumble of traffic on the interstate, two blocks east. A sudden thought had Gigi reaching back into the Hummer for the camera. Maybe she could get a clear picture of Cheryl with one of her lovers if she was closer. With Nolan as cover—the word made her feel like a spy—she might be able
to finagle her way into a better position to observe the tryst. She balked at the thought of becoming a Peeping Tom, but decided she might have a peek in a window if she could work her way around to the back of the house.

Nolan beelined for a tree as soon as she set him on the ground. He lifted his leg briefly, then tugged her to the next vertical object, a mailbox. After letting him relieve himself again, she urged him across the street to the side with 327. He went happily, tail waving, and stopped to sniff a fire hydrant just in front of the shabby yellow house. “Good boy,” Gigi whispered, encouraging him to stay put while she checked out the house. The iron bars on the windows told her she was right to be nervous in this neighborhood. She wrinkled her nose at the strong smell of urine. The fire hydrant must be a popular spot with the local dogs. Not having gotten the hang of the private eye thing, Nolan tugged her impatiently down the block, intent on investigating a dried crust of sandwich lying in the gutter.

“Come
on
, Nolie,” Gigi said, pulling him away. From this angle, she could see that a privacy fence, in much better repair than the house, protected 327’s backyard from potential Peeping Gigis. Discouraged, she started across the street to the Hummer, the leash dangling in her hand. A moment later it zipped out of her fingers as Nolan took off.

“Nolan, come back!” Gigi whipped around in time to see the Shih Tzu dashing after a cat that was sprinting for the fence. As she watched, one hand pressed to her lips, the cat squeezed through a small hole near the gate and Nolan wriggled through after it, dragging his leash behind him.